We know how to speak much that is false but seems like the truth, and, if we like, we also know how to speak the things that are true.

- Hesiod, Theogony (8th or 7th c. B.C., in the voice of the Muses)

Presocratics and the sophos tradition: mythos, logos

• poets: create & interpret stories of the world, including "historical" legends and the divine powers that underlie the elements and their assocations (myth)
• wise men: interpret the world around us...
• mythic systems (Hesiod, rationalizing mythmaker)
• according to pure reason (philosophy)
• in according with empirical observation (science)
• Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides, Empedocles, Protagoras

Hesiod

Constructs a "system" to myth using elements of genealogy as his building blocks

Parmenides (end of sixth, beginning of fifth century B.C.)

A radical application of early logic to derive an intelligible world divorced from the senses, seeking "truth" through pure reason

The way of truth (=the intelligible world, the really real, what we know must be through logical deduction)

The way of opinion (=the perceptible world, the false world that seems to be true to our (faulty) sense perceptions)

Summary: Parmenides began by considering the possible subjects of inquiry: you can inquire into what exists, or you can inquire into what does not exist. But in fact the latter is not a genuine possibility: for you cannot think of, and hence cannot inquire into what does not exist. So every subject of inquiry must exist. But everything that exists must, as Parmenides proceeds to argue, possess a certain set of properties: it must be ungenerated and indestructible (otherwise it would, at some time, not exist -- but that is impossible!); it must be continuous, without spatial or temporal gaps; it must be entirelly changeless-- it cannot move or alter or grow or diminish; and it must be bounded or finite, like a sphere. Reason, the logical power of unavoidable deduction, shows that Reality, what exists, must be so: if sense perceptions suggest a world of a different sort, so much the worse for sense perceptions!

Empedocles (early fifth century B.C.)

• Note the tradition in which he sets himself:

• pp. 162, 192 (bush, bird, fish, now seer & god[!])
• (not a mortal! able to call down rain or drought or bring back the dead!
  
• Interested in constructing hypotheses to explain observed phenomena (proto-scientist)
• p. 166: his brilliant conjecture that the sum of matter is stable
• anticipation of the "Big Bang" theory!
• other examples:
• how skin breathes through pores
• use of analogy (e.g. barley & water) to demonstrate the plausibility of his hypothesis that all things come from earth, air, fire, water: so for example moist bonds with dry just as barley becomes moist and glues together when mixed with water, thus earth and moist water can mix together to form things like flesh
  
• But E. clearly feels bound by tradition in using the terms available to him. Clearly (if oracularly) E. speaks of four elements: earth, air, fire, water, and of the motions of attraction and repulsion among these elements (and among matter generally). Yet he will interchange the Greek words for the gods who represent these elements or characteristics without hesitation: p. 169, p. 173 (note: not the same gods!)
  
• Indeed nowhere in his poem does he speak of attraction and repulsion, rather always of Love and Strife (and less abstract divine equivalents, such as Aphrodite).
  
• And his inspiration, like that of any other Greek poet (sophos) is driven by a Muse: pp. 163, 165.
  
• The two major fragments of this famous Greek proto-scientist: pp. 166, 167.
  
• Sum of matter stable. Cycle of universe. The variety of living and non-living objects represent no more than a different mixing of the elements. Not so very different from what we believe today! But the terms in which he speaks-- Love, Strife, Zeus, Hephaistos -- and the world view they express could not be more different.

Summary: Empedocles insisted, against Parmenides and his followers, that the senses, if properly used, could be routes to knowledge. He agreed with Parmenides' proof that nothing could really come into existence or perish, and thus posited a world in which the stuff of the universe, which was unchanging in its sum, continually moved and intermingled in its parts, thus effecting the changes that we observe. He thereby solves the paradox of an unchanging world (that is, the sum of its parts cannot change, by logic, since nothing can be really created or destroyed) that seems, to our senses, to change constantly.

The universe, according to Empedocles, is made up of 4 elements: air, earth, fire, and water. These four elements are continually coming together and breaking apart because of warring natural powers of attraction and repulsion, which he calls "Love" and "Strife". Change in the universe is cyclical, so that now Love, now Strife, dominates. Under the power of Love, all elements come together into a unity, a homogeneous sphere. As Strife regains power, the sphere breaks up, the elements separate and intermingle, and our familiar world begins to separate out into its familiar forms. Then the process reverses itself: from the articulated world, through several stages, the elements recombine back into the homogeneous sphere. This cycle repeats indefinitely.

Socrates - Plato - Aristotle

• Previous emphasis (Presocratics) = splitting of logos from mythos, the "rise of rationalism"
• Current emphasis (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) = showing that mythos continues to exist alongside of logos

The Sophists

• Contemporaries of Socrates, often confused with him in the public eye
• Teachers, "wise men", who traveled about the major cities of the Greek world, commanding extraordinary fees from their students
• Protagoras: Philosopher, mathematician
• "Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are and of the things that are not"
• Gorgias: Philosopher, rhetorician
• Gorgias's (notorious) funeral oration
  What did these men lack that men should have?
  And what did they have that men should lack?
  May what I say be what I sought to sya,
  and what I sought to say what I ought to say--
  free from the wrath of gods,
  far from the envy of men.
  They had the virtue that is instilled by gods,
  and the mortality that is inborn in men--
  judging the gentleness of sacrifice better than the harshness of demanding one's due,
  far better soundness of spirit than the letter of the law--
  thinking duty in duty's place and time the most divine and universal of laws
  whether in things done or not done
  said or left unsaid ....
  succorers of the unfairly unfortunate
  punishers of the unfairly fortunate;
  assertive when advantage called,
  yielding when propriety forbade;
  restraining hastiness of hand
  with prudence of plan;
  confronting outrage with outrage,
  orderliness with order;
  fearless in the face of the fearless,
  feared themselves in the midst of things feared;
  in testimony to which they raised trophies over their enemies:
  for themselves, dedications;
  for Zeus consecrations.... (translated, brilliantly, by A. Thomas Cole)
  
• Aristophanes, Clouds, 423 B.C.: a portrayal of the Sophists (confused with Socrates)
• What are the characteristics of the Sophists, these early philosophers and scientists?
• What do the Sophists teach?
• What is the public attitude towards them?
• what is unusual or odd?
• what is objectionable or laughable?

Socrates, 469-399 B.C.

• The "socratic method" & "dialectic"
• The example of Plato's Gorgias (on the man Gorgias, see above)
• Rhetoric: Definition #1 = "a skill concerned with speech (=logos)
• Rhetoric: Definition #2 = "a skill whose whole activity and efficacy is by means of speech (unlike skills where manual work is involved)"
• Rhetoric: Definition #3 = "a skill concerned with the greatest and best of human affairs"
• Rhetoric: Definition #4 = "the ability to persuade with speeches either judges in the law courts or statesmen in the assembly or an audience at any other meeting concerned with public affairs"
• Rhetoric: Definition #5 = "the kind of persuasion which you find in the law-courts or any public gatherings, and which deals with what is just and unjust"
• Rhetoric: Definition #6 = "the kind of persuasion which you find in the law-courts or any public gatherings, and which deals not with right or wrong, but with making the people believe what you say"

Plato, 427-349 B.C.

• Who was Plato, what did he write?
• Intelligible world of the "Ideas" or "Forms" vs. the perceptible world of the sense
• But is the intelligible world in Plato really a world of pure logic? (Philosophers often write about Plato as if this is true: but reading the dialogues gives quite a different impression. PLATO IS NOT KANT!)
• Importance in Plato of mythos as well as logos: of the stories
• Example in Plato's Protagoras (spoken in the voice of Protagoras, but this tendency to use "myth" to explain "philosophy" is everywhere in Plato)
• what is the philosophical problem?
• Prometheus and Epimetheus: the philosopher as mythmaker (mythos)
• How would Protagoras have said the same via rational argument (logos)?

[Aristotle: 384-322]